Tag: entertainers

Getting older can be seen as a dreadful experience. When we are young we feel as if things will get better as time passes but then comes that truth for most of us around our mid-twenties that this is not the case. Things only get worse, your body slowly deteriorates, you notice you are not quite as energetic as you once were. I can remember getting up in the morning and going to the park and playing basketball for the entire day. Now such thought I fine to be dreadful. I’m about to turn 28. Now to most that would seem to be a still relatively young age but to me, it’s the beginning of the spiral. The Sought of the optimism that I once had has begun fleeting. When I was younger I felt as if I had a plethora of opportunities in front of me to pursue but not anymore. Can I become doctor probably, if I wanted to start working at 40? Can I become a professional athlete no that ship had sailed after high school? Am I’m going to still be able to talk to young girls(young as in between 18 & 24) and they still find me attractive or am I going to be that old guy pushing too hard?

Now comes the question of whether or not I accomplish anything worthwhile. or have I just wasted my youth. Can I look back as I get older and say I lived a fulfilling life? I guess the answer to that question is both comparative and subjective. In one hand am I comparing my life to other people around or people I see in the media? Secondly, am I comparing my life to an unrealistic idealistic way how my life should have turned out. The true answer is I don’t fully know, but I do feel at times I missed out on opportunities when I was young that I’ll never be able to get a chance at as I get older. I suppose the best thing for me to do is accept the fact that I am getting older, that one day I will die, this is just the process of life, how life has carried on, on this earth since microbes first populated the earth.

Life is just a processes that goes on. People overcome their childhood; to reach adulthood, and get married, and have kids, and then they die leaving their children to continue on to the same processes. Many people cope with this by using religion as a comfort, which is OK I guess but what about us who don’t have a god, is there some alternative for us, some sort of spirituality that can help us as a leading light in this darkness we call life. Are maybe we should just accept a materialistic world that has no real purpose.

To Be human is something I guess you just have to overcome as spoken by Zarathustra. We all cling on to things to help us forget about life, whether it’s movies, watching our favorite television show, following our favorite sport team, reading a thrilling novel, are engaging in an addictive video game, these are all just distraction to the inevitable that someday we are all going to die, and the earth will continue to orbit the sun. just as some person who lived in China during the 12 century in the small city village, had a family, was happy, suffered and died. Yet I know nothing of this person but I’m sure he existed just as trillions of other organism existed on this planet.

But I guess this all doesn’t have to be negative. I recently came across the philosophy of optimistic nihilism, that the mere knowledge of the pointlessness of life can be our refuge. Why does it matter that your boss berated you for doing a bad job, what does matter that you lost that pick up game of basketball, what does matter that you and your spouse of ten years are getting a divorce? Because to the eyes of the universe, none of it matter.

But I suppose these are just fleeting thought that some will embrace, some will reject, and some will be indifferent to.

Black people have been “chucking and jiving” for white America since the minstrels of the 19th century. The only difference today is the market reach and the profitability. Many African Americans take great pride that black people have an influence on pop culture, but at what cost. Have black people become so ghettoized in how they aspire to be successful in this country.

Go to any urban school in this country and ask the typical black child what would he or she aspire to be, and the most popular answer is either a sports athlete or a rapper. You will be hard pressed to hear child aspire to be a tech entrepreneur or business mogul. Why do young black people have such a limited scope of career choices? The answer lies on what black youth see in the media. Media is very important in how people view themselves. Films, music, television, etc. informs us on how to think, how to behave, and how to view life. When you’re black you are particularly sensitive to media influence. This because as a minority you have limited exposure to representation that you can relate to, and when you do get that representation, it hold a lot sway on your thought process.

The worst of this is that black Americans don’t even fully profit from their talents, behind every multimillionaire black entertainer there is a much richer white person in the background profiting handsomely of black ingenuity. Yes, Michael Jordan became a billionaire from his signature sneaker, but Nike in return became a multi-billion dollar sportswear company with a near monopolistic hold in their industry. Yeah, rappers make millions of dollars from tours and single sales, but record companies make billions of dollars every year in licensing royalties.

Black America epitomizes cool in this country, and corporations gladly use us as marketing tools, finding an athlete to petals their sneakers, rappers to wear their clothing or appear in their soda commercials. I’m am not at all angry at anybody for profiting off their marketability, but I do just want to fully analyze the situation in terms of race in this country.

Us as black people need to do better for ourselves, we need to teach our children to have a diversity of aspiration. You have a lot better chance of becoming an oral surgeon or an electrical engineer than a rapper or an athlete. It vital for the future of Black America that our youth have realistic aspirations.